Deptford Puddinghttps://deptfordpudding.com
life and food
Mon, 08 Oct 2018 02:27:13 +0000 en
hourly
1 http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/997c85a92ca37643a0f1f4a1e02d5364?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngDeptford Puddinghttps://deptfordpudding.com
Pickleweedhttps://deptfordpudding.com/2012/08/10/pickleweed/
https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/08/10/pickleweed/#commentsFri, 10 Aug 2012 16:30:36 +0000http://deptfordpudding.com/?p=978“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”Rachel Carson

Sunrise over the Thames Estuary

Sunrise is the best time. The dog can wander on the muddy foreshore and I can listen to the Oyster Catchers calling overhead and perhaps catch a glimpse of a Marsh Harrier. Once we reach the marshes Bear the Blind Husky has to be on a lead otherwise he’d fall in a drainage ditch and have to be hauled out by the scruff of his neck, a great indignity. He exhibits his usual sangfroid at the embarrassment of the lead. I can see him thinking, “I’m a Bear…”

Bear-Boys

Fifty or so miles from Deptford are the North Kent marshes. A world apart: flat, quiet, muddy, and teeming with life. In order to avoid some of the human life I’ve arrived early, very early. To get to the marshes I have to walk across a nudist beach with the dog; me in my fire brigade issue steel toe-capped rubber boots and white 501s, carrying plastic bags and scissors; the blind Husky wandering here and there. The Husky’s name is Bear, because he’s big, snow-white, cool and bear-like. We call him ‘Bear-Boys’, because he’s a boy. Though he’s blind he manages very well, and wanders along at his own pace behind, or in front, so long as there aren’t any distractions. Every so often his front half disappears down a rabbit hole, emerging covered in sand. In few hours the sun will be high in the sky and the beach will be crowded with naked people, most of them men, striding up and down in perfectly bronzed and shaved nakedness, the scent of sun oil hanging heavily in the air. The Husky finds this very distracting, which causes me to have to call him back: “Bear-Boys! Come here!” And a dozen naked men look at me indignantly.

The North Kent Marshes, Isle of Harty

I’ve come here for the Samphire, I don’t know what it is, but Samphire gathering is an uplifting experience. There’s something about kneeling in the mud and enjoying the smell of the just-flowering sea lavender, the wetland grasses, and the water, while tiny crabs skitter this way and that in the ditches, and the birds wheel and hover above you. And everything is green, every shade of green from the pale bluey-grey green of the Sea Purslane, to the vivid green of the Samphire and on to the deep green of the grasses, here and there the green emphasised by the brilliant purple of the Sea Lavender.

You’re Never Alone in a Ditch, Somebody is Always Watching.

Perhaps it’s some sort of memory, something primeval to do with our collective unconscious memory. Jung said we all have this inherited collective unconscious, call it instinct if you like. He said the sea represented our unconscious mind, and the shore our conscious mind. The constantly changing tideline he said, was the fine line we have to balance. But a salt marsh is a blurs these distinctions and stirs deep hidden feelings.

Sea Lavender

Samphire looks like something from ‘Jurassic Park’ and is one of our oldest indigenous plants. About 15cm – 30cm fully grown, with little branches and even tinier leaves. The leaves are more like scales, so it appears smooth and succulent. It is quite difficult to spot unless you come across a large group.

Marsh Samphire

For nearly three weeks I’ve eaten samphire every day either raw or steamed, and now I want to try pickling it. ‘Samphire’ is a corruption of sampier which in turn came from herbe de Saint Pierre, St Peter being the patron saint of fishermen, but it is also known as glasswort, pickleweed, sea bean, in North Wales sampkin, and in Norfolk ‘samfer’. Samuel Pepys loved Samphire, buying it by the barrel, but his was Rock Samphire, a different plant altogether. Rock Samphire grows on rocks and cliff faces, and was sold pickled on the streets of London to the cries of “cres’ marine!” and, “I ha’ rock samphier!” The gathering of Rock Samphire was done on an industrial scale, so much so that the plant almost disappeared in the 19th Century. It was famously dangerous work, small children were dangled upside-down by ropes tied to their ankles, women made up the majority of the workforce clambering up and down steep cliffs using a crooked stick to collect the samphire.

Shakespeare wasn’t impressed, describing a scene near Dover involving a dangling child, he wrote in ‘King Lear’:

How fearful and dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low.
The crows and coughs that wing the midway air show scarce so gross as beetles.Half-way down hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!

Robert Turner, from the Wellcome Library

Rock Samphire has an unpleasant smell which disappears when it is pickled and becomes a very tasty sauce: ‘of all the sawces (which are very many) there is none so pleasant, none so familiar and agreeable to Man’s body as samphire,’ wrote a contemporary of Pepys. Robert Turner in 1664 wrote of samphire gathering on the cliffs of the Isle of Wight that it was ‘incredibly dangerous … yet many adventure it, though they buy their sauce with the price of their lives’. Two hundred years later Victorian painters and illustrators found the poverty and desperation of rock samphire gathers a bucolic and romantic subject, far removed from the reality.

The Famous Victorian Image of a Samphire Gatherer by W. Murray for the cover of ‘The Graphic’ magazine.

Nowadays you can buy Samphire all year round in fishmongers, imported from Israel or Holland. I’m a bit strict about some things, and so only eat Samphire in season, and Samphire I’ve gathered myself. The season runs roughly from June to the end of August, depending on the weather. This year is unusual, the samphire on my marsh only appearing mid July. There is more of it this year, but most of it has ‘bolted’, grown too fast into a single skinny stem, instead of slowly growing and branching into plump juicy wonderfulness. And some is already beginning to turn red, the colour of Autumn. Americans call it ‘Swampfire’, for the way the marshes become a blaze of red in the Fall. Samphire tastes crisply salty, and grows alongside another edible salt marsh plant, Sea Purslane. You can buy ordinary organic Purslane from Perry Court Farm Organics at Brockley Market, and while you’re there you can buy Samphire from Dorset at the Hand-Picked Shellfish Co. stall.

Sea Purslane

I snack on Sea Purslane walking along to the Samphire. Purslane is a greyish green whereas Samphire is a vivid bright green, unless it is covered in dried mud! We sometimes add Sea Purslane to salads, pushing the boat out this week and mixing Perry Court Farm’s organic Purslane (£1.20 a bag) with foraged Sea Purslane, adding slices of toasted cheese, mint, and slivers of beetroot and carrot.

Salad of Sea Purslane and Organic Purslane

But the Samphire is the main attraction for me, I hope that if I pickle enough I’ll be eating it at Christmas. If you venture out onto the marshes looking for Samphire you’ll need scissors and a bag, and wellies of course. Don’t confuse it with Golden Samphire which confusingly grows alongside. That has bright yellow flowers and short feathery leaves.

Marsh Samphire, or Glasswort

Once you are sure, don’t bother with plants that are beginning to turn red, pick the tallest and plumpest you can find and snip off the top 100mm (4″). If you cut further down you’ll encounter the woody inner stem which holds the plant erect. Never pull it up by its roots. For a salad or for steaming you’ll need a couple of handfuls. To pickle you’ll need considerably more, hopefully you’ll find a bed of Samphire like this:

Marsh Samphire

I collected what I thought would be enough for the two storage jars I’d bought back in Deptford, roused the sleepy Husky, who was covered in mud (but so was I) and headed back to my shack. I sorted the cuttings, removing any woody bits and stray grass, then snipped it slightly shorter, to about 50mm – 75mm. This was the most time-consuming part of the process, because each stem had to be inspected separately. Next I soaked the Samphire in a few changes of clean water to remove the mud and dust, and then weighed it. I had 600g to pickle, less than I’d hoped, just enough to fill one 3 litre storage jar.

Cleaned Samphire Ready For Pickling

My recipe is inspired by Patience Gray in her book “Honey From A Weed”. Patience believed that Rock and Marsh Samphire were so similar that they could be treated the same way. She suggested eating Samphire raw with a little wine vinegar, as an appetiser, or pickled in white wine vinegar with thyme and oregano, and maybe salted anchovies. There are many ways to pickle Samphire, but I’m following Patience Gray and Henry V: ‘Thus may we gather honey from the weed And make a moral of the devil himself’.

Pickled Samphire

Pickled Samphire

Preparation time: impossible to say, but apart from gathering the Samphire, sorting and cleaning is the most time-consuming part.

Cooking time: 5 minutes.

I started with a 3 litre storage jar, sterilised with boiling water and allowed to dry naturally.

Ingredients:

600g samphire washed and trimmed into 50mm – 75mm pieces

3 bottles (3 x 350ml) white wine vinegar

1 tbsp soft brown sugar

4 tsp peppercorns

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp dried Thyme

1 tsp dried Oregano

Method:

Leaving the Samphire to one side, mix the rest of the ingredients together in a saucepan and heat, bringing to the boil. Let it boil for a minute, then allow to cool for a while. It doesn’t have to cool completely.

Pack the Samphire into the sterilised jar. Pack it tightly, then pour in the pickling liquid, leaving a 1cm gap at the top.

Seal the lid and…that’s it!

My plan is to serve it with mutton or lamb, or anything really. And I’m planning to make some more…

Most people have preconceived ideas about the Isle of Sheppey, usually negative ideas! But 100 years ago Leysdown, at the eastern end of the island, was at the cutting edge of technological innovation. Today Leysdown is a backwater stuffed with holiday camps and amusement arcades and only comes alive in the summer. If you take the road east from Leysdown towards Shellness, you pass one final holiday camp at Muswell Manor then 300 hundred yards further on the road ends and a rutted track begins. This is Shellbeach.

Leysdown is an unlikely location for ‘firsts’ but this month is the 103rd anniversary of the first flight by an Englishman in Britain, by 25 year old John Moore-Brabazon, on the 2nd May 1909.

In 1908 the Short Brothers, who had a factory in Battersea building balloons, looked around for more space so they could experiment with the new flying machines. They established a small aircraft factory at Shellbeach, the first of its kind in the world. With the world’s first purpose-built aerodrome. Nearby was Mussel House (now Muswell Manor) the HQ of the world’s first flying club, the Aero Club of Great Britain.

Charles Rolls drove Wilbur and Orville Wright to Shellbeach. The chauffeur was a passenger! May 1909.

A couple of days after Brabazon’s epic flight the Wright Brothers arrived at Shellbeach to meet the Shorts and discuss licencing Short Brothers to build Wright Flyers. They had their picture taken outside Mussel House with Brabazon, his friend Charles Rolls, and Frank Maclean.

The Wrights with the Shorts, and Charles Rolls, JTC Brabazon, and Frank McClean, outside Muswell Manor, Shellbeach. May 1909.

The Daily Mail put up a prize of £1,000 for the first Englishman to fly a circular mile, and in October 1909, Brabazon’s Short No. 2 biplane was launched from rails and flew the circular mile at a height of about twenty feet. Six days later he took a piglet with him in a basket. The first flying pig! In March 1910 Brabazon received the world’s first pilot licence, Charles Rolls received the second. Three months later Rolls made the first two-way Channel crossing in a Wright Flyer built by Shorts.

Charles Rolls flying a Wright Flyer manufactured by the Short Brothers at Shellbeach

Frank McClean offered the Navy two planes for pilot training and so the Royal Naval Air Service, the forerunner of the Royal Flying Corps and the Fleet Air Arm came into being at the new Shorts factory at Eastchurch, a mile or so from Shellbeach. In 1912, in Sheerness Harbour, a Short S27 was the first plane to takeoff from a ship in Britain. After the 1st World War Shellbeach was abandoned as a flying ground, the action moved to Eastchurch. If it wasn’t for the efforts of Sharon and Terry Munns, the owners of Muswell Manor, these incredible events at Shellbeach would have been forgotten.

Site of the Shellbeach Flying Ground, Muswell Manor in the distance.

Sheppey also claims to have invented Gypsy Tart, fondly remembered (by me anyway) from school dinners, and a real regional speciality. The story goes that a farmer’s wife watching hungry gypsy children playing outside her home decided to cook them something sweet and filling with the few ingredients she had to hand. Gypsies haven’t always attracted hostility, for hundreds of years they were an accepted part of the countryside and an important itinerant workforce for farmers.

19th Century Gypsy Family with their Caravan

In the winter months they headed for London; by the 17th and 18th Centurys there were large groups of gypsies in Notting Dale, Walworth, and around Seven Dials in Covent Garden. The biggest gypsy encampment near London was in Norwood, the ‘Great North Wood’ recorded since 1272, which stretched from Selhurst to Deptford. The wood was also home to charcoal burners and farmers, and since Henry VIII’s time used for timber for the Navy. The section of the wood near Ladywell known as Bridge House Farm was set aside to provide wood to maintain London Bridge. As late as 1891, twenty gypsies were recorded at Bridge House Farm in the census, in addition to farmer Daniel Phillips’ family.

Margaret Finch, Queen of the Gypsies. Norwood.

The most famous Norwood gypsy was Margaret Finch, the Queen of the Gypsies. She lived in a hovel made from branches and lived to 108. Her fortune-telling drew huge crowds including Samuel Pepys and his wife. Coincidentally Pepys’ cousin Thomas owned a section of the Great North Wood in Hatcham, Deptford. Fortune-telling was an accepted part of gypsy life. In 1668 Pepys wrote in his diary, ‘This afternoon my wife and Mercer and Deb went with Pelling to see the Gypsies at Lambeth and have their fortunes told; but what they did, I did not enquire.’ Perhaps he was nervous of gypsy curses? Five years earlier walking near Deptford with a friend he’d met some gypsies. He wrote in his diary, “in our way met some gypsys, who would needs tell me my fortune, and I suffered one of them, who told me many things common as others do, but bade me beware of a John and a Thomas, for they did seek to do me hurt, and that somebody should be with me this day se’nnight to borrow money of me, but I should lend him none. She got ninepence of me. And so I left them and to Greenwich and so to Deptford.“

I’ve met quite few mediums, astrologers, and psychics over the years. I’m a confirmed sceptic, I don’t believe in ghosts, spirits, poltergeists, or astrology. My ‘believing’ period happened in my mid to late teens. I believed in flying saucers, that the pyramids were constructed by aliens, that houses could be haunted, that poltergeists threw things around, and that the ‘I Ching’ was a book full of wisdom. Every year I consulted ‘Old Moore’s Almanac’ and believed in Nostrodamus’ predictions. Haunting my local library I read everything I could lay my hands on about flying saucers. ‘Chariots of the Gods‘ by Erich von Daniken was the book we all read at school and quoted endlessly.

Then I discovered Harry Price. Mr Price had written a book called, “The Most Haunted House in England: Ten Years’ Investigation of Borley Rectory“. He was a local man schooled in New Cross, and for a while he lived on Harefield Road in Brockley. He made his reputation exposing fraudulent mediums, but went on to be discredited as a psychical researcher.

Harry Price and Ghostly Companion.

Harry Price wrote about a dozen books and I read most of them, sometimes waiting weeks while the library tracked them down. His year-long ‘psychic investigation’ of Borley Rectory made him famous, and one wintry day we made an excursion to Borley. The rectory was long gone destroyed in a fire, but the church was suitably spooky, with Tim Burton-esque yew trees cut into fantastical shapes. The church is a place of pilgrimage for the many Harry Price fanatics, and there is a thick visitors’ book. I found an entry: “Harry Price was a charlatan.” And so he was.

Shellbeach, Nella Jones Old Hut.

At Shellbeach is a sad abandoned shack. This belonged to the famous psychic Nella Jones. I met and photographed Nella once at her home in Bexleyheath for ‘Woman’ magazine. I’ve met so many mediums that I’ve become a bit jaded about working with them, they can be hard work. Most want to impress you with their powers, and constantly ask questions that just might lead to some revelation instead of getting-on with the reason I’m there, to take their picture.

Mystic Meg and her Psychic Telephone

For a while I freelanced for ‘Sunday’, the News of the World’s colour supplement, where Mystic Meg worked as the magazine’s deputy editor. She’d changed her name from Margaret Lake to Meg Markova. I had the impression the staff were frightened of Meg, she hardly ever spoke, and when she did it was in a strange whispered monotone. She had the whitest skin I’d ever seen, and seemed to glide silently around the office without touching the floor. One day I was at the lightbox joking with the picture editor when Meg appeared silently by my elbow. “I like this man,” she whispered and glided away. Soon after I was asked to shoot new pictures for her column, this was considered a great honour because Meg had always insisted on starry photographers. The great day arrived, I photographed Meg with her crystal ball, with a black cat, and with her Mystic Telephone; an ordinary dial telephone covered with stickers of stars and moons and astrological signs. I thought it was a bit naff, but the picture editor told me the telephone was very important. This was the early days of premium telephone lines, and there were fortunes to be made.

Mystic Meg’s Horoscope Page in ‘Sunday’.

Another friend was made redundant, and starting a new career as a literary agent she began representing an astrologer. Under her guidance he went from a weekly column to a national daily. Then came the notion that people would pay to hear recorded horoscopes; it would take a large investment, all her redundancy pay, to set up the operation and record the horoscopes but the returns might be worth it. My friend asked her accountant for his opinion. “Don’t take the risk,” he implored her, “you’ll lose everything.” She ignored his advice and now she’s a millionaire. There was a boom in psychic magazines: ‘Spirit and Destiny’, ‘Fate and Fortune’ and so on, and the womens’ weeklies ran a spooky feature at least twice a month. For a while there were endless weird stories to be photographed: the ex-policeman with the poltergeist in Surbiton who told us about the ghostly motor-cyclist in the Tolworth underpass; the woman near Heathrow with the spirit that carried cans of beans across her kitchen (cue Clarissa and beans suspended from a fishing rod); the couple in Derby who insisted a Roman Centurion vacuumed and did the washing-up, (cue Clarissa again, with vacuum hose suspended from the fishing rod); the family who heard ghostly Spitfires taking off; and the woman in Dagenham who sees Jack the Ripper in her mirror. I became blasé about council houses built on monasteries, and the endless stories of tunnels linking modern maisonettes to the nearest graveyard.

The Wild Cattle at Chillingham Castle, ‘The Most Haunted castle in England’

Otherwise hard-headed editors were willing to believe anything it seemed. Off I’d go trying to inject a bit of spine-chilling drama with coloured gels and Hammer house of Horror lighting. Some of these stories never appeared, there simply wasn’t anything to them. I spent all night with two ‘ghost hunters’ at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, which the owners claim is the ‘most haunted in England’. Well it is built on an old monastery, and is a favourite with TV ghost shows. My ghost hunters became hysterically excited at a dot of light on the screens of their digital cameras, “It’s an orb!” They screamed, while nothing showed up on my Polaroids. The most exciting moment of a very long night came when we opened the door of one room and a bat flew round and round over our heads. Far more interesting to me were the famous wild white cattle in the grounds, unique to Chillingham.

Have you ever seen a convincing photograph of a ghost? No, neither have I and I’ve been in some supposedly rampantly haunted houses.

Rita Rogers in ‘Bella’

The editor of another magazine had received a reading from Rita Rogers, who claimed to have Romany gypsy in her blood. Rita had been Princess Di’s favourite psychic, and Diana and Dodi would fly to Rita, landing their helicopter on her lawn. When Rita became ‘Bella’ magazine’s resident psychic I went to photograph her, with Clarissa and a makeup artist. Rita lived in a big house in Derbyshire. She followed me around asking questions as I moved the lights from room to room and reloaded the cameras. “Have you been in an accident recently?” No. “Do you know anyone who’s had an accident?” No. “Someone called John?” No. I was trying to concentrate, but she wouldn’t give up. She disappeared to have her makeup touched-up. Clarissa put her head round the door of the room where I was setting-up. “She’s made the makeup girl cry,” she hissed, eyes rolling. We never found out why. I impressed Rita by making friends with her parrot. “I’m going to leave him to you when I die,” she promised, “he doesn’t usually like men.” Apparently Loyd Grossman had been filming ‘Through The Keyhole’ a few weeks before, but when he asked the parrot who was a pretty boy the bird had turned to Loyd in a world-weary fashion, looked him in the eye and said, “Fuck Off.” I liked Rita, despite all the questions she was friendly and down to earth. After we’d packed the lights away and just before we left, we sat having a cup of tea with her, Clarissa was sitting by herself on a sofa. Rita suddenly turned to her and said, “Your father is sitting next to you. His name is George.” And Clarissa burst into tears.

Bonjour Monsieur Picasso by Clarissa Porter

Sometimes mediums are so desperate to impress it can be funny. Olive in Clacton asked so many questions it was obvious what she was up to, giving up on me she tried Clarissa, who had already told her our life-story and that we’d met at art school. “Do you mind if I tell you there’s a dark man wants to talk to you?” She asked. “He’s wearing a coat of many colours and says you need to take care of your brushes, he wants to kiss your hand. His name is Picasso.” She wrote to us after our visit saying she’d seen Judy Garland with Clarissa as well! Clarissa painted a picture of herself with the ‘dark man’, Picasso.

Dame Barbara Cartland at home

I’m always surprised by the almost universal acceptance of clairvoyance and the paranormal. Years ago I was asked to photograph Barbara Cartland at home. She was in her 90s but still a formidable personality. “Take a large bunch of flowers and Clarissa, and don’t be late,” commanded the picture editor. On the day we stopped at the Wild Bunch in Seven Dials to collect a huge bouquet of roses, artfully arranged and be-ribboned. At the appointed hour we rang the bell of Camfield Place. The door was opened by one of her secretaries who took the flowers from us with what I thought was a sigh, not a sigh of appreciation more a sigh of resignation. She beckoned us into a cavernous lobby filled with urns and vases full of dusty plastic flowers. We were instructed to wait. The journalist arrived late, and the secretary told her Dame Barbara was waiting for her in another room. As she shook off her coat, the journalist turned to me and said, “I’m going to give Dame Barbara a reading first,” and she disappeared through a door pulling a large crystal ball from her handbag. An hour passed, then the secretary reappeared and told me to set up my lights in the entrance hall. “You will stand there,” she said pointing at a corner, ” and Dame Barbara will stand there,” she said pointing at the opposite corner.” I found out that Dame Barbara was an early flying enthusiast, promoting gliding and in particular towed gliders. In 1984 she received an award in America for her services to the development of aviation! Not only that but she was a life-long campaigner for gypsy’ rights. In the 1960s she lobbied for gypsies to be allowed permanent sites, and opened one of the first sites in Hertfordshire, named ‘Barbaraville’. A few months later I was sent to photograph Jilly Cooper at home in the Cotswolds. The same journalist came along, and the crystal ball was produced again.

“I dreamed I saw you dead in a place by the water. A ravaged place. All flat and empty and wide open.”

Nella Jones also claimed to be a Romany gypsy, she was known as the psychic detective, becoming famous helping the police with their enquiries and leading them to recover a stolen painting by Vermeer; she also claimed credit for guiding them to the Yorkshire Ripper. Nella was said to have helped ‘put away’ some hard men, and was rewarded with a dinner in her honour given by Scotland Yard. Unfortunately for her, one of these hard men held a grudge. The story I was told was that he wrote to her just before he was due to be released. “I know about your place at Shellness. One night when you’re asleep I’m going to burn it to the ground with you in it.” A terrified Nella never went there again, and the property was sold at auction. A friend of mine bought it which is how I heard the story. It’s changed hands a couple of times since, but still seems to have a cloud hanging over it.

My recipe is Gypsy Tart of course. I’ve based my recipe on the Kent County Council recipe with some minor changes, you can see a nice dinner lady making it here. You’ll have enough filling to make two 20 cm diameter tarts. This is a really simple farmhouse recipe, which is probably why Gordon Ramsay ‘discovered’ it and put his version into his Pub Food book. Don’t worry if the finished tart looks a bit untidy, that’s how it should be, it’s gooey, and sticky and finger-licking good! If you go to Sheppey you can always buy a homemade Gypsy Tart from the Brambledown Farm Shop. Gypsy tart is so sweet that you need something like creme fraiche to go with it, something to cut through the sweetness. English strawberries are just in and I bought some from Mersham Game at Brockley Market. They were the perfect accompaniment for the tart, which is so soft and runny that you can dip the strawberries into the tart instead of sugar.

Gypsy Tart

Gypsy Tart

Preparation time: 30 mins.

Cooking time: 40 mins.

Ingredients ( makes 2 20cm tarts):

110g plain flour

Pinch of salt

1 tsp icing sugar

50g margarine (or butter) cubed

Ice cold water

1 410g can of evaporated milk

340g dark Muscavado sugar

Method: First make the pastry: Sift the flour into a mixing bowl with the salt and icing sugar.

Add the chopped margarine, and rub it all together with your fingertips till it resembles small breadcrumbs. Make sure all the fat is rubbed in to the flour, don’t hurry.

Make a ‘well’ in the middle and add a little cold water, working the dough with your fingers and adding water as necessary to make a ball of dough, stiff not too wet. Then wrap it in cling film and put into your fridge to chill for at least 15 minutes.

Take the dough, remove the clingfilm and on a sparsely floured surface, roll it out. It doesn’t have to be too perfect. Grease 2 tart tins. Wrap half the dough around your rolling pin and lay it across the first tin, Gently push the dough down into the tin. Then repeat with the other tin. With a palette knife trim the excess pastry dough from around the tins, a little proud of the rim. Then if you wish crimp the edges with your fingers. With a fork prick the the pastry across the base of the tins. Loosely cover the base of the tin with baking paper and weight down with scattered ceramic baking beans.

Bake in your oven preheated to 200C for 10 minute till the edges of the pastry just start to brown. Then remove the beans and baking paper and return to the oven for another 10 minutes. Then remove and allow to cool on a rack in the tins.

While that is happening, make the filling: Put the evaporated milk and the sugar into a deep mixing bowl and whisk rapidly. You can do this by hand, but an electric mixer is better. You mustn’t skimp on the whisking! At least 15 minutes! The mixture will become a light golden brown, and increase in volume.

Put the tart tins onto a baking sheet (you can do this one at a time) and carefully pour the sugary milk into the tart, so it just comes to the top of the pastry case. Reduce the oven to 180C and carefully slide the tart on the sheet into the oven and bake for 15 minutes, watch it doesn’t burn. I see the nice lady from KCC says 3 minutes, I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

Remove from the oven. The surface will have slightly set, but the interior will still be slightly wobbly, a bit like the marshes at Shellness. Allow the tart to cool on a wire rack, it will carry on setting but it will always be a bit runny .

I served mine with fresh English strawberries, guess where? Yes, Shellbeach!

The Beggarstaffs were artists William Nicholson and James Pryde. As students they travelled to Paris and were influenced by the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret. In 1894 the pair began calling themselves The Beggarstaff Brothers. They revolutionised poster design in Britain using flat colours, clear outlines, and making collages from coloured paper to produce striking graphic images of everything from Queen Victoria to Rowntrees Cocoa.

In London’s East End the portly well-dressed gentleman with his delicate cup of cocoa must have looked out of place among the slums and the grinding poverty. Bethnal Green was home to the most notorious London rookery, the Old Nichol.

The Old Nichol district of Bethnal Green 1892

The Old Nichol had grown from a few houses in 1680 on a field dug for brick-making, to a shanty-town of hovels built to accommodate the arrival of 25,000 Hugenot refugees, Jews from Eastern Europe, immigrant weavers from Ireland and the rapidly increasing indigenous population. By 1880 the Old Nichol covered 15 acres, or just a square quarter mile, but it contained some of the worst constructed house anywhere in Britain, crammed together in alleys and courts joined together by arteries of narrow lanes.

A Court off Boundary Street in the Old Nichol, 1890

Families sometimes of ten people occupied single rooms in dwellings built with half-baked bricks and a mortar made from a waste product of soap manufacture called ‘billysweet’. The mortar never dried-out, and floorboards were laid onto earth. With little or no foundations the walls and floors sagged, and the interiors were permanently damp. In these teeming conditions people scraped a living making matchboxes, smoking fish, catching birds to sell, or just thieving. Anything to keep the rent man at bay on ‘Black Monday’. No running water, no lavatories, and into that stew were added horses, donkeys, pigs, chickens, ducks, dogs and of course rats. Infant mortality was twice the number in the rest of Bethnal Green, and five out of six child deaths were caused by suffocation, their parents or bigger siblings rolling on top of them at night and smothering them. The squalor and depravity was almost indescribable, but Dickens tried. He visited Jacobs Island in Bermondsey, the setting for Fagin’s rookery in ‘Oliver Twist’, the Old Nichol would have been too dangerous. He was accompanied by two senior policemen and three constables, with a further platoon of officers within a whistles-blow. “Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper: every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three … filth everywhere — a gutter before the houses and a drain behind — clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of fourteen or fifteen, with matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing.”

The Old Nichol was even worse than that, “one painful and monotonous round of vice, filth, and poverty, huddled in dark cellars, ruined garrets, bare and blackened rooms, teeming with disease and death.” As the 19th Century drew to a close two books were influential in awakening the public conscience, Arthur Morrison’s “A Child of The Jago” about the Old Nichol, and Jack London’s “The People of The Abyss“.

The newly formed LCC began pulling-down the slums in 1891, and in its place created the Boundary Estate, the first council housing in the world, with gardens built triumphantly on a mound of rubble from the Old Nichol. The Rowntree Cocoa poster appeared at this time, one of the biggest posters the Beggarstaffs ever produced. I imagine it was left hanging on a partly demolished wall, a target for resentful mud-slinging locals. A passing versifier wrote :

“A splotch of mud on the Beggarstaff Man,

A splotch, that is all.

But it blinds the eye of the Cocoa Man,

On a Bethnal Green dead wall.”

Aztec woman pouring cocoa from cup to cup to make the sacred froth ca.1553

Cocoa, or cacao beans came from Central and Southern America. Cultivation was first recorded 3,500 years ago, and the beans were sacred to the Mayan and Aztec civilisations. When the Spanish arrived they found the Emperor Moctezuma II would drink it flavoured with spices and whipped into a froth from a gold goblet for dinner. It was brought to Spain by the conquistador Henri Cortez, but the Spanish found the drink bitter and almost unpalatable. By adding flavours such as cinnamon and pepper, and later of course sugar, chocolate drinking became popular but largely confined to Spain. When Cromwell’s Navy captured Jamaica from the Spanish, the English found cacao plantations planted by the Spanish.

Bishopsgate in London, 1650.

The first advertisement for chocolate in London appeared in 1657, “In Bishopsgate Street in Queen’s Head Alley, at a Frenchman’s house, is an excellent West Indian drink called chocolate, to be sold, where you may have it ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable rates.”

Making chocolate was very labour intensive and along-winded. The cocoa nuts were split and the beans dried in the sun before shipping to England. Then the dried beans were roasted and winnowed to remove the shells leaving ‘nibs’, which were ground on a special stone turning them into a paste which was dried in moulds. Only then could they be transformed into chocolate. You need between 300 and 600 beans to make 1 kg of chocolate.

Cocoa Fruit or Nut, 20cm long!

17th and 18th Century chocolate would be unrecognisable to us today, the drink was thick, cool, and gritty. Bitter and grown-up, especially if it was mixed with wine or port. I’ve never been a fan of chocolate, too sweet and sticky. Watching the crowds of (mostly) women excitedly gather around the stalls selling chocolate at Borough Market I wonder what it is that makes it so appealing. Apparently twice as many women as men crave chocolate, and men mostly prefer bitter chocolate.

Keith Floyd and Clarissa in his kitchen in Devon. The fridge is on the left.

Some years ago I was waiting with Clarissa for Keith Floyd in his Devon kitchen. We waited with M, a free-lance journalist. Keith was in Tuckenhay preparing for the lunchtime service at The Maltsters Arms. M was hungry, and she rifled through his fridge. “Mmm…” she said, “…chocolate.” She turned to us brandishing a large bar of Bourneville. “You’d better not touch that,” warned Clarissa. “Why not? Keith won’t mind, will he?” replied M. “Yes he’ll mind very much, he’s numbered each piece.” Maria shrugged disbelievingly and scoffed some Bourneville. Keith appeared and he and Clarissa started cooking. I sat watching, and M started banging away at her laptop. M’s obsession was to be given a column on a certain tabloid. “Kelvin is interested in my ideas,” she’d gasp. Nothing else mattered, she’d sit all day bashing-out ideas for her non-existent column, instead of doing what she was supposed to be doing, and recording Keith’s every word. Stopping for coffee Keith went to the fridge, “Who’s touched my chocolate?” He said a mite grumpily. “I didn’t think you’d mind,” said M brightly. “Well, I do.” And Keith refused to acknowledge her presence for the rest of the day, but at every opportunity dropped into the conversation his observations on trust and honesty, and how some people would stop at nothing in their pursuit of self-gratification. And so on.

Dr Matthew Green

If you’d like to find out more about London’s chocolate history, I recommend Dr Matthew Green‘s Chocolate and Coffee Tour. Matthew guides the tour around the sights, sounds, and smells of 18th Century London, complete with actors in period costume, and the chance to taste an authentic 18th Century cocoa. It’ll be a bit different to the usual walking tour, he had the idea when he was writing “The Lost World Of the London Coffeehouse’ which will be published through the Idler Academy in May. Invited to give talks at The Academy, Selfridges and at the upcoming Port Eliot Festival he thought there might be an audience for a real-life experience and assembled a team of actors and musicians to bring to life the streets and coffee houses of 17th Century London.

London Chocolate House in the 17th Century

I met Matthew in The Black Lab, he ordered hot chocolate of course and began regaling me with chocolatey anecdotes. “If you could try 17th Century chocolate you’d probably choke!” He said sipping his cocoa. ” It was bitter and gritty and quite sludgy. But it became very popular in the coffee houses, in 1663 there were 82 coffee houses in the City of London, 100 years later there were 3,000 in London, and remember there were no news services. You went to a coffee house, and sat at a big communal table and immediately started a conversation with the person sitting next to you; that was the convention and how you learned the latest gossip and news. ‘What news have you?’ would be the shout as a newcomer entered.” I glanced across the road at a chain coffee shop and today’s coffee ‘experience’. Lone customers sitting in hushed reverence with their latte, staring at their laptops. Imagine rushing into a smoke-filled Costa sweaty, unwashed, a clay pipe clamped between your blistered lips, clothes layered upon layer and dirty from the street, flopping down next to a perfect stranger and shouting “What news?!”

The Victualling Yard at Deptford, 1813.

Chocolate was more difficult and time-consuming to prepare than coffee or tea. In Deptford’s Royal Victoria Victualling Yard, cocoa for the Navy was produced. Sailors had chocolate for breakfast, it replaced the unpleasant burgoo, coarse oatmeal and water.

Sailors enjoyed generous daily rations. In 1622 the allowance was 1lb biscuit and 1 gallon beer every day, 2 lb salt beef four days a week, together with 1 lb of bacon or pork, 1 pint of pease. And for the other 3 days a quarter pound of salt fish and quarter pound of butter and a quarter pound of cheese. Additionally the sailors could buy other food from his wages. In the 18thn Century he gallon of beer, long a source of trouble, gave way to chocolate and tea. Good living was one of the inducements to joining-up. Chocolate, or cocoa, or as sailors called it pussers ki was produced in Deptford from raw beans, more than 800 tonnes a year was made in the Victualling Yard. The ‘ordinary’ at 84% cocoa nibs the most pure chocolate, and the ‘soluble’. The ‘ordinary’ took several hour to prepare starting the night before when the chocolate was grated from 7 lb slabs, stamped with the Admiralty arrow, then locked away under sentry guard till the early hours when it was transferred to the ship’s coppers (boilers) and boiled for 3 or 4 hours, before being served for breakfast, with biscuit when the bugle sounded ‘Cooks of Messes’. The soluble chocolate which was less pure at 64% contained sago flour and could be prepared quickly, therefore more suited to drinking on watch in bad weather. It wasn’t till the advent of the modern drinking cocoa from Rowntree and Cadbury that it was taken up by the mass of the population at the end of the 19th Century.

Rabot Estates in Borough Market

I went to Borough Market, to Rabot Estate, buying 100% pure cocoa bean shavings, £7.50 for 120g; but you can buy 100% cocoa by Willie’s Cacao in Waitrose, I’d recommend the Venezuelan at about £6 for 180g.

My recipe is for an authentic cocoa drink from the 17th Century. I pushed the boat out and bought a chocolate cup on ebay, a Royal Worcester design by Sir Joshua Reynolds dated 1765, when the artist was founding the Royal Academy.

You can adapt this recipe to your liking by adding or subtracting ingredients. Be prepared for a surprise, there’s nothing whispery about this drink!

17th Century Restoration Cocoa

Restoration Cocoa, or, a Real Hot Chocolate

Serves 4

Preparation time 10 minutes

Ingredients:

Water

Whole milk

1 star anise

1 pimento, or a sweet chili pepper

Half stick of cinnamon

Few scrapes of nutmeg

Pinch of black pepper

Few drops of pure vanilla essence

Few drops of orange flower water

6 heaped tsp of ground almonds

1 tbs honey, or more, to taste. Or sugar the same.

2 tbs pure 100% cocoa

Method:

The amount of water and milk depends on the cup size. I used an authentic chocolate cup which is about the size of a demi-tasse: 100ml. So for 4 cup servings I needed 100ml water, and 300 ml milk. In a small pan bring the water to the boil, and in a separate pan heat the milk gently.

With a pestle and mortar pound the star anise, the pimento or chili pepper, the nutmeg, the cinnamon, and the pepper. Pound till it resembles ground coffee. Add a few drops of pure vanilla essence and orange flower water, and the ground almonds. Combine all these ingredients then drizzle-in the honey so the mixture resembles a grainy paste.

Stir the paste into the boiling water till smooth, then spoon the cocoa into the milk.

Finally add the water to the milk and whisk gently on a low heat till the mixture thickens slightly. Pour warm into your cups to serve.

]]>https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/04/07/the-beggarstaff-man/feed/6onemorerollbeggarstaffs_brothers_Rowntree's_cocoamap-boundary-estate-area-1892-old-nicholBoundary_Street_1890Poverty_map_old_nichol_1889Arnold-CircusAztec-woman-pouring-cocoaBishopsgate_1650Cocoa/Chocolate/The Beggarstaff manCocoa/Chocolate/The Beggarstaff manCocoa/Chocolate/The Beggarstaff man17thC-chocolate-houseMap-Deptford-Dockyardcocoa-bean-roasters-deptford-dockyardCocoa/Chocolate/The Beggarstaff manCocoa-Hot-Chocolate-The-Beggarstaff-manCobblers To The World!https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/03/19/cobblers-to-the-world/
https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/03/19/cobblers-to-the-world/#commentsMon, 19 Mar 2012 15:47:57 +0000http://deptfordpudding.com/?p=716The past is another country and in my case it is my scrapbooks, and Rochester and Chatham where I spent three years at art school.

In 1803, in America, the present was another country. Few Americans knew anything about the land west of the Missouri, so President Jefferson sent an expedition of thirty men, led by two young soldiers Lewis and Clark, to explore and map the wilderness.

U.S.stamp commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

They didn’t know how long they would be away, or how vast was the country that lay ahead. Dinner was uppermost in their minds and much of their time was spent hunting and foraging for food, which they cooked in a type of pot the early settlers had brought with them from England, the Dutch Oven. Two and half years later Lewis and Clark returned, and wagon trains began spreading westwards towards the Pacific. In the mid 19th Century nearly 3,000 Mormon pioneers, many of them religious refugees from England, pulled handcarts 1,300 miles from Iowa to Utah. No covered wagons for these poor people but hanging proudly from their carts was a Dutch oven.

Americans still celebrate their ancestors reliance on the Dutch oven, holding cook-offs at Dutch Oven Gatherings (DOGs). The DOG season has just started in America, and one favourite dish is the old English ‘pot pie’, also known as a ‘cobbler’. Pot pies are as old as pastry making, and were a regular item on the menus of grand houses in England and France; the ‘four-and-twenty blackbird’ pie was a pot pie. Americans really took pot pies, or cobblers, to their hearts. Regional variations come with colourful names: the Grunt in Massachusetts, the Slump in Vermont, the Buckle, the Betty, and the Sonker! The Brown Betty is a bit like a bread pudding, and the Pandowdy is similar to an apple crumble. The ‘Washington Post’ commented that the phrase “as American as apple pie” should really be “as American as a cobbler”.

Maybe the name came about because they resemble cobblestones, or perhaps because small round loaves were called ‘cobs’ in England. Sometimes uncooked biscuits or suet dumplings were scattered on top of the filling, giving the appearance of a ‘cobbled’ road when the pie was cooked. The ‘Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America’ says: “Without brick ovens, colonial cooks often made cobblers in pots over an open fire. As cobblers cook, the filling stews and creates its own sauce and gravy, while the pastry puffs up and dries.” English recipes tend to use a scone type of dough, and in America they use a more crisp pastry.

The Dutch Oven is perhaps the single most important item of cooking equipment in the history of cooking, a simple cauldron with three legs to raise it above the fire and a flat lid with a raised lip allowing coals to be scattered on top; the lid can be used by itself as a skillet. A wire handle attached to the pot allowed the Dutch Oven to be hung over a fire. We still have these pots but now they’ve lost their legs, the lids are rounded, and we call them ‘casseroles’. The hardware shops of Deptford sell ‘Dutch Pots’ or ‘Dutchies’, aluminium pots in varying sizes but no legs, and if you search the internet you’ll find camping shops selling the real thing, a cast iron Dutch oven with legs. In the 17th Century saucepans were mostly made from brass and very expensive. They were handed down through generations, George Washington’s mother stipulated in her will that her ‘kitchen iron-work’ should be divided between her grandchildren. Iron pots were cheaper but heavier, more difficult to make and liable to crack. At school I learned about Abraham Darby and the Industrial Revolution, he was the inventor of the coke-fuelled blast furnace. Darby was manufacturing brass cooking pots in Bristol when in 1704 he travelled to Holland to study a new iron-casting method utilising sand moulds. He brought his skills and some Dutch workers back to England where he carried on experimenting and perfected the iron casting process, making thinner, lighter, and stronger pots.

Abraham Darby's blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale at night, by Philipp James de Loutherbourg

He moved to bigger works in Coalbrookdale and patented his casting method in 1707 monopolising the cast iron cooking pot market in Britain and America for the next 200 years. There’s something reassuringly sturdy and no-nonsense about cast iron cookware. We have quite a collection of frying pans, griddle pans and pots. I like the gritty blackness of them and the way you never really clean them, they just get better and better. ‘Seasoning’ it’s called, which is now a family joke. Anything I buy or acquire that just sits unused in a corner is described as ‘seasoning’ till the time is right. I’ve a dishwasher seasoning at the moment.

'Man About Town' January 1961.

I’ve been taking pictures since I was three, first with my big sister’s box camera which often jammed. Then I’d watch her disappear under the eiderdown to open the camera and free the film. Then she bought a Brownie 127, and I was given a small camera from Woolworths that took 16 pictures on 127 film. It had a plastic tartan case and a wire viewfinder. I’ve still got it somewhere. When I was eleven I started developing my films in my bedroom, see-sawing the rolls through glass rollers in a shallow tank and total darkness before making contact prints. I decided I would be a photographer, my sister Christine encouraged me bringing home the latest cutting-edge magazines with shots by the trendy triumvirate of Duffy, Donovan, and Bailey. ‘Man About Town’. American ‘Esquire’, ‘Queen’, and American ‘Look’ featured inspiring photographs by Irving Penn and William Klein. Sunday supplements appeared featuring photographers such as Don McCullin and Art Kane.

Don McCullin photographs the Liverpool 8 poets for the Telegraph Magazine, March 1967.

I saved these magazines, cutting out the pictures and sticking them into scrap books. I still have a serious magazine habit, but now I buy most of my glossies from the stall in Deptford Market on Wednesdays, ‘3 for £4’, and my home is stuffed with hundreds, probably thousands of magazines.

Wednesday's Deptford Market, the magazine stall.

My poor mother was dismayed, Christine had been to Wimbledon art school for three years, and her horizons had been broadened. I went to Wimbledon Saturday mornings when I was 10 or 11, but she hoped I’d grow out of it. “Photography is a very expensive hobby,” she said at every opportunity. Followed by a stern, “You needn’t think you’re going to art school.” But I was quietly single-minded, borrowing all the photography books from the library and staring wistfully into the windows of the local camera shop.

Bill Brandt's 1937 picture of a snicket in Halifax, from my Time-Life book 'The Art of Photography', laying on some exposed cobbles in Ashby Road, London SE4.

I tended towards contrasty images of urban black and white emptiness, my favourite picture was Bill Brandt’s shot of a ‘snicket’, a steep ramp of cobbles in Halifax. Christine went to New York for a holiday and came back with “Message From The Interior”, a book of photographs by Walker Evans who became my latest hero.

“What was New York like?” I asked her, starry-eyed. “If you don’t look up, it’s just like Tooting,” she said. Luckily my sister’s campaign to get me into art school didn’t waver, and when I was about 16 she bought me a Leica IIIc with a collapsible lens. I left school and took a job so I could buy a second-hand MPP enlarger with all the dishes, paper, and chemicals. When I’d assembled a few prints Christine organised the college applications and then drove me around the country from interview to interview till I found a place in Rochester. Where I met Clarissa, who in the picture below is walking down Constitution Hill in Swansea modelling an Ossie Clark dress for my college-leaving portfolio.

That picture by Bill Brandt of cobbles fascinated me. The streets around my home were once laid with granite setts, and when the surface breaks-up the cobbles reappear. Some streets and mews are still cobbled, Comet Street off Deptford High Street for instance, and Greenwich Market. Lewisham has its own ‘snicket’, White Post Lane. Not so dramatic as the Halifax street but still evocative of a mysterious bygone era.

White Post Lane

The streets east of White Post Lane were built in an old quarry, their names give it away: Loampit Hill previously known as Lome Pitt Hole, Sandrock Road, Cliffview, Fossil, Overcliff, and so on. White Post Lane is much older than the houses and used to run along the quarry’s edge from the brick field to Loampit Hill. The cobbled stretch may date from the old quarry workings it seems out of place among the late 19th and early 20th Century houses.

Fours years after art school and at last I was working for magazines photographing rock royalty and some fashion. One day we’d been on a fashion shoot and gave the model a lift home to Chelsea. She invited us in for a coffee, and introduced us to her bemused boyfriend Terry. I was star-struck, more impressed than I’d been meeting Paul McCartney.

Terry de Havilland. Cobbler to The World. Courtesy of matchesfashion.com

Terry de Havilland was the cobbler of the moment, a genius. I had several pairs of platform shoes including a multi-coloured snakeskin pair, a rip-off of Terry’s design. He was very nice and friendly as a proper cockney cobbler should be, and despite his trendy credentials as nice as pie. His shop was on the Kings Road, “Cobblers To The World”, and I’m pleased to say he is still making fantastic shoes.

My recipe is for a Beef Cobbler, real rib-sticking comfort food. You don’t need a Dutch oven to cook a cobbler just the modern equivalent, the casserole dish.

Beef Cobbler

Beef Cobbler

Preparation time : 10 – 15 minutes

Cooking times : 90 minutes (but can be started the day before and cooked in two stages)

Ingredients : (makes 3 or 4 portions)

For the filling,

2 or 3 tbs beef dripping

2 tbs plain flour

Rock salt and freshly ground pepper (to season the flour)

975g beef, I used shin of beef, cut into generous cubes

225g banana shallots, sliced (or 2 small onions, but the shallots are sweeter)

300 ml beef stock

300 ml red wine

4 pickled walnuts, quartered, with 125ml of the vinegar from the jar

2 tbs tomato purée

Bouquet garni of thyme, parsley and bay tied together

For the topping,

450g plain flour

1 tsp English mustard powder

5 tsp baking powder

Salt and pepper

110g butter, cubed

50g walnuts, crushed

2 tbs chopped parsley

300ml milk

1 egg, beaten, to glaze

Some fresh sage leaves

Method :

Melt 2 tbs of the dripping in your casserole dish (mine is 23cm diameter and 10cm deep and it is cast iron). Dust the cubed beef in seasoned flour and brown in batches in the melted dripping before removing with a slotted spoon to a plate.

Add the remaining dripping and soften the shallots., then de-glaze the pan, shallots and all, with the wine, the stock, and a wine glass of the vinegar from the pickled walnuts. Stir-in the tomato purée and return the meat to the dish. Add the pickled walnuts and tuck-in the herbs, take care that the meat is covered by the stock, if not add more beef stock or wine. Cover the casserole with the lid and simmer very gently for three-quarters of an hour.

While this happening, prepare the pastry top. Sift the flour and the baking powder into a large mixing bowl and season with pepper, salt and the mustard powder. Rub in the butter till the mixture resembles bread crumbs and then add the chopped parsley and the chopped walnuts, and stir-in the milk. Knead lightly in the bowl, or tip out and knead, whichever suits you, till everything is combined.

Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for at least 30 minutes, or until you are ready. Remove the herbs from the casserole. Take the chilled dough and flatten it with your hands so you have a circle roughly the same size as the casserole lid. You could press the lid gently onto the dough to give you a template for the amount you need to make the cobblers.

Cut across the dough in opposite directions and take each square and using your hands roll it into a ball before flattening it slightly and placing on top of the meat in the casserole. When you’ve finished brush the dough with egg-wash and scatter with some fresh sage leaves.

Cover the casserole with the lid and put into your oven pre-heated to 200C for 10 minutes. Then remove the lid and continue to cook for a further 20 – 30 minutes at 190C.

The cobbler will be golden and crisp on top and underneath steamy, sticky, and soft, the dough having wrapped itself around the beef!

]]>https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/03/19/cobblers-to-the-world/feed/7onemorerollCobblers To The WorldLewis_and_Clark_1954_Issue-3cHandcart-Statue-Salt-LakeCobblers/Cobbles20060428224251!Philipp_Jakob_Loutherbourg_d._J._002Cobblers/CobblesCobblers/CobblesCobblers/CobblesCobblers/CobblesCobblers/CobblesCobblers/CobblesCobblers/Cobblesfaulkeners-01487-750Terry-de-Havilland-PortraitBeef CobblerA Peckham Frolichttps://deptfordpudding.com/2012/02/29/a-peckham-frolic/
https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/02/29/a-peckham-frolic/#commentsWed, 29 Feb 2012 19:36:26 +0000http://deptfordpudding.com/?p=667Every year we say to each other ‘lets make some marmalade’, and every year we leave it till the last moment to buy the Seville oranges. This year was typical. I hadn’t seen any Sevilles in the local shops, then one day last week driving along Royal Hill in Greenwich I saw several crates of oranges displayed outside The Creaky Shed.

The Creaky Shed, Greengrocers.

I stopped and ran inside, the greengrocer was bagging some tomatoes for a customer when I asked for Seville oranges. “No they’re finished,” he said, but as I turned to go he murmured, “hang on” and winked. Disappearing out the back he returned with a bag of Sevilles. “These are past their best I was going to chuck them out but you can have them.” Feeling pretty pleased with myself and promising to return with a jar of marmalade I went home and weighed them, 14 lb! Or about 10 lb when I removed the really mouldy fruit. This is how it must have been for Mrs Keiller in 1797 in Dundee. The story goes that a Spanish ship put into Dundee in a storm with a cargo of Seville oranges that were ‘on the turn’. Seeing an opportunity the resourceful Mrs Keiller bought the cargo and turned them into marmalade. This sounds to me like early PR, but anyway the rest is history. Or is it? A similar story emerged in Oxford in 1874 when Sarah Cooper made 34 kg of Seville orange marmalade, selling the jars in her husband’s grocery shop. Her marmalade proved such a hit that it quickly took over the shop, and now Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade holds a Royal Warrant, and the rest is history. Again. Neither of these good ladies invented orange marmalade, it must have been common knowledge because in 1777 Boswell wrote to Dr Johnson telling him ‘My wife has made marmalade of oranges for you’.

Seville Oranges

Sevilles are not true oranges in the usual sense, and are grown mostly in Spain. Almost the entire crop comes to England for marmalade industry. A couple of years ago I was at the Thursday Farmers Market in Oxford and met Oliver Tickell, a writer, environmental campaigner and Oxford Marmalade fanatic. Oliver has pretty firm views about marmalade, he even has a dedicated website! We sat outside a coffee shop and he produced a jar of 5 year old homemade marmalade and launched into an enthusiastic explanation of what makes real Oxford Marmalade so great while we took turns sticking our fingers in the jar and scoffing big sticky chunks of the almost-black marmalade.

Over the past ten years he’s made hundreds of jars, they fill every spare space in his house and his wife has forbidden any further production. Oliver is scathing about modern marmalade, “Too insipid, tasteless, not bitter enough, too much added pectin,” he said pulling a face. ” It is impossible to buy real Oxford marmalade, it should be fruity and more astringent. The key thing, ” he adds, “is not to add any water, or very very little, and to add some root ginger. And leave in the pips, I think a few pips are no big deal.” Calling out “Make your own, it’s good for you!” Oliver sped off on his bike weaving his way through the market. I’m easily led by traditionalists like Oliver and decided that in the future this is how my marmalade must be. I would refuse to eat anything else.

Keiller’s Dundee Marmalade moved to London to be near the docks for the oranges and for the sugar. In 1880 they set up in Silvertown next to Tate’s sugar factory in the heart of the Royal Docks. Keiller’s joined Tate and his arch-rival Mr Lyle the maker of golden syrup and another Scot who’d seen the sense in moving to the London Docks. In 1900 Keillers built a spanking new wharf, Tay Wharf, named after the River Tay in Dundee and the area became known as ‘the Sugar Mile’. Tate & Lyle settled their differences and amalgamated in 1921, Keillers were joined by Trebor, Cross and Blackwell pickles, and Sharps Toffee. The air was thick with the sweet smell of sugar cooking.

During the war Silvertown was a prime target for German bombers, at one point cut-off from the rest of London by a ring of fire, the residents were evacuated Dunkirk-style on the Woolwich Ferry. Now the workers’ terraces have gone replaced by blocks of flats; the pubs which were once every 100 yards or so have gone too. On Pier Road the Royal Standard Hotel clings on, ‘Exotic Dancers Mon-Fri’, and ‘Live Girls in Here’.

Using my ‘A – Z’ I retraced my steps and found the original disused gates and railway tracks ending at the boarded up entrance, and the narrow doorway where the workers filed into the factory to ‘clock-on’.

Now the wharf is home to a scrap metal yard and a theatrical shoe manufacturer.

Window in the old Keiller Marmalade factory, Tay Wharf. Now home to Theatrical Shoemakers.

The first marmalade was made from quinces cooked into jelly-like blocks and eaten after dinner as a sweet. Seville oranges are bitter, smaller, and knobblier than ordinary oranges. Citrus fruit originate from China and east Asia, and all the present day varieties descend from just three wild species. Mandarin oranges are one of the three original wild fruit. Crusaders must have seen oranges in Palestine in the 12th Century, Marco Polo wrote of them in the 13th Century, and by 1561 Lord Burghley was building a shelter for his orange trees in Lincolnshire. Seville oranges were the first introduced to Britain, followed by the sweet Mandarins. In the 17th Century ‘orangeries’ were an essential part of many gardens in England. John Evelyn grew oranges in Deptford at Sayes Court, writing instructions for his gardeners, “Never expose your Oranges, Limons, & like tender Trees, whatever season flatter; ‘til the Mulbery puts-forth its leafe,”

Peckham Library, near the Site of Peckham Manor House

Travelling around the country meeting and photographing people is part of my job. If I’ve travelled more than 100 miles my accent sometimes causes amusement. When I’m asked where I’m from I say: “Peckham.” Sometimes I add “innit” which always raises a laugh. If I said Deptford or Lewisham there’d be puzzled looks and I’d have to go into detail. “Near the Dome,” I’d say, searching their faces for signs of recognition. Or, ” I can see Canary Wharf from my road…it’s between Lewisham and Harrods..,” and so on. I’m not from Peckham but my family were from Walworth and Peckham, and everybody’s heard of Peckham thanks to ‘Only Fools and Horses’ (which was actually filmed in Bristol and Ealing).

Site of Peckham Manor House and Gardens

John Evelyn was a friend of Sir Thomas Bond who lived in Peckham Manor House. Like some of my relatives Sir Thomas was born in Peckham. The Manor House was somewhere behind the present library. The Bonds’ family motto is ‘Orbis Non Sufficit‘ or ‘The World is Not Enough’, a phrase James Bond referred to as ‘the family motto’ in the eponymous film. Like his friend John Evelyn, Sir Thomas collected fruit trees, I think it’s reasonable to suppose he had orange trees as they were highly regarded decorative plants in the 17th Century. Charles II made him a baronet when he was restored to the throne at the end of the Commonwealth in 1660, and the two men were friends.

Charles travelled frequently to Peckham to hunt with Sir Thomas and his son Henry. It is likely that Nell Gwynn (or Gwyn, or Gwynne) sometimes accompanied him to Peckham, which in the mid-17th Century was a peaceful farming village with a few large houses a mile from the nearest busy road, and a popular place to visit being just 3 miles from the City. The former actress may have returned to the stage in Peckham, where there was a small theatre to entertain visitors. The King was secretly pro-Catholic in a time when it really mattered whether you were Catholic or Protestant. His mistresses (he had 12 or 13) were Catholic, except for Nell who was very popular with the Protestant population. ‘Pretty witty Nell’ said Pepys in his diary. Once when her coach was rocked by angry peasants thinking it was transporting one of Charles’ Catholic mistresses, she leaned out shouting, “Good people you are mistaken, I am the Protestant whore!”

Nell Gwynn as Cupid, by Richard Thomson. Pepys had a copy of this engraving in his office.

She probably met John Evelyn because there is a tradition that the Royal Hospital in Chelsea was her idea, something she persuaded Charles to do, and Evelyn was the Commissioner in charge of Dutch prisoners of war kept at Chelsea so he was consulted about the new Royal Hospital. In her early life the aspiring actress sold sweet oranges from China for 6d, at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. Later she acted in several plays, becoming something of a star with a gift for comedy and very popular with ordinary Londoners. Sooner or later it was inevitable she would come into contact with the King, either at the theatre, or at the private performances given at the palace. He was smitten, paying her up to £9,000 a year and giving her a house in Pall Mall where she kept meticulous records. She was fond of oysters, macaroons, rum, faggots, and oringes. She had two children by Charles and he was about to make her the Countess of Greenwich when he died. She always overspent, and when Charles was on his deathbed he said to his brother and heir James, “Let not poor Nelly starve.” The new King paid off her debts and continued paying her a pension. She died at the age of 37, after suffering two strokes. and was buried at St Martins in the Fields, the future Archbishop of Canterbury conducted the service. James II was deeply unpopular because he was openly Catholic, and he fled to France in 1688 followed by Sir Henry Bond who was bankrupted by his father’s development of Bond Street in the West End.

The Peckham Frolic. Published by ECCO (18th Century Collections Online)

Peckham Manor House was sacked by the Protestant mob in 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution. The legend of Nell in Peckham, and the subtle absurdities of religious secrecy were satirised 100 years later in a play by Edward Jerningham, ‘The Peckham Frolic’.

My recipe is Oliver Tickell’s for Oxford Marmalade. You can make marmalade with sweet oranges instead of Sevilles, I’d simply reduce the amount of sugar to compensate, the sugar has nothing to do with the marmalade setting so you can adjust to your taste. I like mine bitter, I leave the pips which have softened in the cooking, and I like the chunks to be man-size.

This is a bloke from Peckhams marmalade, a real geezer of a marmalade!

Wash the fruit and cut into halves. Put the fruit into a large pan with 300ml of water. Cover with a lid and heat.

When the water is warm add 900g of sugar and cook gently says Oliver, for 30 minutes stirring occasionally.

Allow to cool. Then remove the fruit and slice it into chunks, or strings if you prefer. I like builder-size pieces. Return to the pan, pips and all, add the ginger and heat. The pips are necessary for the Pectin they provide and the bitter taste. When warmed stir in the remaining sugar and bring to the boil. Allow to cook at a gentle boil says Oliver, or a fast simmer, for hours! At least 2 hours. Stir all the way to the bottom, and stir frequently to prevent burning. When the mixture turns a deep brown and the pith is translucent the marmalade is ready. Stir in the treacle if you want, for extra oomph. Test for setting point by dropping a small piece of marmalade on a very cold plate, it should set after a few seconds, if not carry on cooking!

When it is ready have your jars standing-by and warm. You need to bottle the marmalade hot or it won’t keep. Ladle or spoon the hot marmalade into the jars leaving a small air gap, seal tightly and leave them to cool. Store the marmalade in a cool dark place. Next comes the toast and butter, and the frolic.

Joseph Myatt is another unsung food hero of Deptford. Born in 1770 in Maer in Staffordshire, Joseph travelled south to work as a nurseryman for ‘Mad Jack’ Fuller in Sussex. In the early 1880s Myatt brought his family to Deptford and Manor Farm where he began growing strawberries.

Manor Farm (in the centre of the map) in 1833

He cultivated many new varieties: Myatt’s Pine in 1832, Eliza named after his daughter in 1836, British Queen, described as the most famous strawberry ever raised in England, and Deptford Pine in 1843. Myatt held annual Strawberry Feasts at Manor Farm which lasted for days, with tents, bunting and fireworks, and girls dressed as Greek goddesses riding on carts carrying baskets of strawberries. I think we can deduce that Joseph Myatt was an enterprising and forward-looking man with an eye for the main chance, so it’s no surprise that he tried his hand growing rhubarb. “Rhubarb, hmm, sharp and tangy,” he probably thought, “will complement my sweet strawberries.”

Myatt's British Queen strawberry, named in Honour of Queen Victoria in 1840

Before Joseph Myatt rhubarb was considered a medicinal herb. The root was known as a purgative, excellent for constipation, and as a general cure-all. Rhubarb came from China and Siberia, the name is derived from Rha, the old name for the Volga river. Marco Polo wrote of the miraculous root and it began to be traded through Venice into Italy in 1608, and then onward into the rest of Europe. It was extremely expensive simply because of the distance it travelled, at first it was worth more than gold or opium. In 1657 a London pharmacist listed the powdered root at 16/- per pound, nearly three times the price of opium.

But no one considered eating rhubarb, it was the stock in trade of the apothecary and the druggist.

The 18th C Bow Street Court at 4, Bow Street.

In the year Joseph Myatt was born, one Thomas Davis was charged with stealing musk, saffron, mace and 22 lb of rhubarb from his employers Messrs Kenton and Vazey, apothecaries of Lawrence Lane in the City. The goods were valued at £130, an enormous sum, and Davis was found out because his accomplice Sam Smith offered them to a Mr Winch, a druggist in the Haymarket, who then offered to sell them to Kenton and Vazey.

Davis and Smith appeared before the celebrated magistrate Sir John Fielding, the ‘Blind Beak’ and brother of Sir Henry Fielding the author of Tom Jones. In 1749 the Fielding brothers founded the Bow Street Runners and were fearsome guardians of the law. Despite statements of previous good character, the verdict was guilty, and the punishment was death.

Sir John Fielding, the 'Blind Beak' and founder of the Bow Street Runners

Joseph Myatt experimented with different hybrids of rhubarb producing cultivars of differing colour and flavour. He hoped he could convince the public to eat the stems along with his strawberries, and in 1809 sent his sons to Borough Market with 5 bunches of rhubarb. They only managed to sell 3 bunches to the sceptical traders, but Joseph wasn’t detered and persisted in offering rhubarb for sale. In 1815 at the Chelsea Physic Garden it was discovered by accident that if the plant was covered and kept in darkness it produced sweeter, more tender shoots earlier in the year, so-called ‘forced rhubarb’. But the real trigger to start the change from medicine to food was the arrival of cheaper sugar. By the 19th Century rhubarb was so popular, here and in France, and in America, that demand exceeded supply.

18th C. Advertisement for Night Soil Men. Image from Wikipedia.

Soon London was ringed with rhubarb fields fertilised with ‘night soil’ (poo!) from the City.

Joseph Myatt died in 1855, and was buried in Nunhead Cemetery. The family remained in the area, several Myatts lived in Foxberry Road; his son James took the business to Camberwell where Myatt’s Fields still exists as a park. Joseph’s grandson Frank migrated to Australia in 1906 and started a vineyard still producing wine today, they hold an annual Strawberry Fair to remember where and how it all began!

Manor Farm was sold to accommodate the Victorian building boom and the coming of the railways. The farm buildings were between present-day Breakspears Road and Wickham Road; nothing remains but in the 1970s and early 1980s we kept a horse in livery stables behind a house on the eastern side of Breakspears, now developed into Tack Mews. That was probably the last remnants of the farmyard. There are no plaques or statues to Joseph Myatt, he is remembered only by the name of the local school, Myatt Garden, and the street Manor Avenue.

The railways were the death of London’s market gardens, and rhubarb growing moved north to the area between Wakefield, Leeds, and Bradford: Yorkshire’s ‘rhubarb triangle’. Here sheds were built to grow forced rhubarb in darkness. The soil was perfect, the water from the Pennines was just right, the mills provided ‘shoddy’ a by-product of wool manufacture used to mulch the soil, and beneath the sheds were the coal mines which produced cheap fuel to heat the forcing sheds. Excellent railway links to the rest of the country provided the final piece of the jigsaw. Rhubarb became more and more popular, soon there were 200 growers and every night during the long season special trains known as The Rhubarb Express took the fruit to Covent Garden.

When I was growing up, everyone had a rhubarb patch in their back garden, a leftover from the War, as kids we’d dip a stick of rhubarb into a bag of sugar and happily chew away the hours. During the War the government listed rhubarb as an essential food and fixed the price at 1/- per pound. But ironically wartime rationing of sugar caused a generation of children to turn their backs on rhubarb and the industry went into a steep decline, accelerated by the arrival of cheap exotic fruit from abroad. One of the growers, second-generation rhubarb grower Ken Oldroyd, refused to be beaten and bought up abandoned rhubarb fields, expanding the business. His daughter Janet and her son now run the business, forced rhubarb from late December to March then field rhubarb from April till September/October. They produce over 1,000 tons annually, 200 tons forced in her candle-lit sheds.

Janet Oldroyd in a Forcing Shed

Janet is something of a human dynamo when it comes to rhubarb and local tourism, winning awards for both, and she’s one of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes. She thinks this is rhubarb’s time, “We all want to eat healthily, and rhubarb is very good for you, we want people to buy our rhubarb because they can afford it and like the taste. Not because it is expensive and exclusive.” The Yorkshire growers have shrunk in number from 200 before the war to just 12 now, but initiatives like the Rhubarb Trail and the annual Food and Rhubarb Festival in Wakefield in February.

My Box of Rhubarb from E.Oldroyd & Sons

I’ve been buying Oldroyd’s forced rhubarb for the last three years, you order by post or telephone and then a box of perfectly wonderful rhubarb arrives by courier. It’s a bit of a treat buying rhubarb this way, making the ordinary special I think, and they sell rhubarb plants as well and will advise on the different varieties. They even sell Myatt’s Queen Victoria! Thanks to Janet Yorkshire rhubarb has been recognised by the EU and designated a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin). You can take a tour of the forcing sheds and see the rhubarb growing by candlelight, Janet says it’s a unique experience, “It’s very calming in the sheds, it has almost a religious effect on people when they are in the warm candle-lit darkness. A very pleasant feeling, if you’re very quiet you might hear a bud burst as leaf pushes through. To me it’s like a field of daffodils, but inside. You’ve just got to be quiet and at peace.”

Rhubarb goes well with both fish and meat. Mackerel with rhubarb compote is very nice, rhubarb with duck, goose, or even black pudding is scrummy. The classic puddings really can’t be bettered, the pies and the tarts, the simple rhubarb and custard, or how about an old-fashioned plate pie of rhubarb cooked in pale ale! Yesterday I was talking to Daman Buckingham, a butcher at Secretts Farm. Daman asked if I had any ideas for a sausage; he wanted to use coconut and ginger and wondered if I had any ideas for the meat content. Duck was the obvious choice, though the texture would be a bit smooth for my taste. I suggested adding rhubarb, we know it goes well with ginger and duck, but I wonder about the coconut?

My recipe is a twist on the classic Rhubarb and Custard, a tart to bring back memories, I hope.

First make the pastry, and as usual try to do this in cold conditions on a cold surface.

With a hand blender and a large bowl whizz together the eggs, butter, and sugar. Then sift in the flour and fold together. Tip out onto a cold floured surface and knead once or twice, gently.
Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the rhubarb pieces in a large frying pan, if possible in a single layer. Sprinkle with sugar, add the butter and cook very gently for about 5 minutes, till the sugar dissolves and the rhubarb is nearly but not quite cooked. Pour on a dash of brandy and sizzle for another 30 seconds or so, you’ll have to judge it. Then remove from the heat.
Grease a 25cm (10”) flan tin, roll out the pastry and line the tin, baking blind for 15 minutes at 200C (400 F). Remove from the oven and allow to cool then carefully arrange the rhubarb evenly in the pastry case, and pour over syrup left in the frying pan. Whisk the egg yolks, cream and vanilla and pour over the rhubarb. Return to the oven and cook at 200C (400F) for 35 minutes. Serve hot or cold and watch it disappear!

]]>https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/02/17/rhubarb-rhubarb/feed/3onemorerollRhubarb, Rhubarb!Manor Farm map 1833Strawberry_British_QueenBow_Street_Microcosmsir+john+fieldingNightcartticket1Rhubarb, Rhubarb!Rhubarb, Rhubarb!Rhubarb, Rhubarb!“This is a London Particular, a Fog…”https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/01/06/this-is-a-london-particular-a-fog/
https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/01/06/this-is-a-london-particular-a-fog/#commentsFri, 06 Jan 2012 18:55:05 +0000http://deptfordpudding.com/?p=583The packed bus crawled along through the smog following an inspector who carried a flaming torch so the driver wouldn’t lose sight of him. The ‘Keep Left’ bollards in the middle of the road were circled by metal pots filled with flaming oil, the effect was medieval and frightening. It was only a few yards from the bus stop to the entrance of the estate, but I was nine and on my own, and a choking wall of dirty wet yellow smog blinded me, it was as if the air was solidifying and would smother me. Gripped by the icy fingers of panic I crept along. By feeling my way with my hands I found my block of flats. Indoors a yellowy damp mist hung around the rooms but mum lit the fire and soon everything was warm and homely.

Inspector with Flaming Torch in front of an RT Doubledecker

Just before Christmas I was walking along Bowditch and caught the rare whiff of smoke from a coal fire. Smells can be very evocative, the scent of a log fire in a country pub, bread baking in the oven, the smell of a coal fire makes me feel nostalgic for simpler times. A tad sentimental perhaps, but I am. In this romantic reverie I turned into Longshore and walking towards me was a policeman wearing a proper helmet, with a tie under a buttoned tunic, just like my childhood hero PC 49. Nothing ‘hi-vis’ about this copper, and he didn’t appear to be festooned with gas and pepper sprays, batons, and all the other stuff our policemen carry these days. My first thought was he might be an extra in a film that could be shooting nearby, but then I wondered if he was simply a bit of a traditionalist, like me. Whatever he was his appearance was strangely reassuring and added to my nostalgia.

My PC 49 Annual

Before we lived on the estate, we lived for a few months with my Auntie Clara and Uncle John in their tiny two-up-two-down in Cheam. Coming from Walworth and Peckham Clara believed she was in the country. Her ‘front room’ was only used at Christmas, we lived in the kitchen with its cavernous larder stacked with Ministry of Food dried milk tins. My uncle’s chair was in the corner next to the fireplace. He always had a stash of Dandys and Beanos under the cushion, and sometimes The Beezer. My interest in food started there in that kitchen, Clara cooked old-fashioned food: rabbit, heart, liver and dumplings, bread pudding, and so on. The smell of rabbit or heart cooking transports me back to her kitchen, if I shut my eyes I can see every detail. On Sundays her two grown-up sons came with their families, and eleven of us would squeeze around a table meant for six at the most, while Tip the dog hovered under the table hopefully and the budgie chattered to his mirror. Summer meant salad from the garden, and I first tasted mussels, cockles and winkles, and had my first taste of beer from a spoon wielded by Uncle John. Winter was stews and roasts, I was instructed by my uncle in the mysteries of the Yorkshire Pud, and the pudding mixing became my job on Sunday morning. Uncle was from Newcastle, or “Noocassel” as he said. He’d been a rivet boy in the shipyards, catching red-hot rivets in a bucket (“bunnet” he said because the bucket was conical like a bonnet) as they were thrown up from the quay-side to the riveters. Then came the war and he fought with the 8th Army in the desert, demobbed he met Clara, widowed by the war. They seemed perfectly matched and happy; even happier when Uncle John won a small amount on the Pools, enough to buy a television and bring the toilet indoors!

Uncle suffered with his chest, perhaps the searing heat of the rivets, or the dust of the desert, or maybe the coal fire in the kitchen. Or the ounce of Golden Virginia he would send me to buy from the off-licence, along with a bottle of Mackeson for Auntie Clara. The smogs that came in November and December every year were very difficult for him. 1952 was the year of The Great Smog, the smog lasted for 4 days in December and it was reckoned 4,000 people died and 100,000 were made ill by the smog, recent research increases the death toll to 12,000, an almost unimaginable figure by today’s standards. At the time people thought it was normal, something that happened every year, and after all, London was famous for its fog. But this was the worst air pollution episode in our history. I don’t remember the Great Smog but I do remember the St Johns rail crash in the thick fog of December 1957 when 90 people died.

St John's Rail Crash 1957, from "St John's Lewisham 50 Years On, Restoring the Traffic." By Peter Tatlow. Published by The Oakwood Press.

The smogs weren’t a 20th Century phenomenon, the mid 19th Century suffered from endless smogs caused by hundreds of thousands of household chimneys, thousands of factories, and the power stations. Deptford and Greenwich both had power stations, Deptford’s first was at the Stowage, in 1891 it was the biggest power station in the world and operated till 1957. Another power station, Deptford West, was built in 1929 and operated till 1983.

Deptford West Power Station in 1973. Photograph from geograph.org.

If you’ve visited the States you’ll know that most Americans think London is permanently shrouded in fog, London’s fog is part of our heritage. The Victorians were obsessed with it probably because it made their lives difficult, dangerous, and maybe exciting. Thomas Miller in 1852 describes how someone milking a cow in the street near Smithfield had to hang on to her tail for fear of losing her, and how the butchers in Smithfield would sometimes leave their cellar flaps open in the fog hoping a stray sheep or prize bullock might tumble down and add to their stock! American visitor Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in 1857 that it was so dark at 10am he had candles placed on his breakfast table, and that later it was even darker: ‘very black, indeed, more like a distillation of mud than anything else; the ghost of mud,—the spiritualized medium of departed mud, through which the dead citizens of London probably tread, in the Hades whither they are translated. So heavy was the gloom, that gas was lighted in all the shop-windows; and the little charcoal-furnaces of the women and – boys, roasting chestnuts, threw a ruddy, misty glow around them. And yet I liked it. This fog seems an atmosphere proper to huge, grimy London.’ Not for nothing was London known as ‘The Smoke.’

Link Boys in a London Particular

“This,” said Mr Guppy to Miss Summerson in Bleak House, “is a London Particular. A fog Miss.”

Charles Dickens used the thick yellow smog as a metaphor for the law in ‘Bleak House’, something common to everyone but at the same time keeps them apart. In ‘Barnaby Rudge’ he mentions the ‘link boys’ that carried flaming torches and for a ‘joey’ (fourpenny bit) would guide you home. Pea soup was sold, half a pint for a halfpenny, on street corners; in the mid 19th Century it was estimated there were 500 pea soup stands in London. Made at home by the poorest it was reheated over and over, ‘Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot Nine days old‘ goes the old nursery rhyme. Pease was both singular and plural, porridge was pottage a thick semi-solid dish now called Pease Pudding. Auntie Clara often made Pease Pudding for my uncle, in the north-east it was almost the national dish. I didn’t like it much when I was younger, now of course I love it. The yellow pea soup is more solid than liquid and gave the fog its name: ‘pea-souper’. Because the smog was particular to London it became known as ‘A London Particular’.

London Particular, or Pea Soup

Pea Soup, A London Particular.

Serves 4 – 6

Preparation time: 10 – 15 minutes.

Cooking time: 2 hrs 10mins.

Ingredients:

1 500 g packet of dried split yellow peas, soaked in cold water overnight then drained (£1 from Robert Walker, aka John’s in Deptford High Street)

900 g pork belly slices (about 6 slices)

Little rock salt

A little oil, or lard (more traditional), about a serving spoonful.

675 g vegetables, finely chopped, to include half a large onion, carrots, 2 or 3 sticks of celery.

1 ham hock

1 bay leaf, 2 or 3 sprigs of fresh thyme, and 3 pieces of parsley. All tied together with string.

Freshly ground black pepper.

Bay leaves for garnish

Method:

Season the pork strips with some rock salt.

Melt the oil or lard in a very large pan, the type your auntie would own, then brown the pork on all sides till the fat begins to melt.

Add the vegetables and the peas (the soaked peas will have more than doubled in weight) to the pan. Tuck the ham hock and the herbs in the middle and cover with boiling water. Simmer gently for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Season with some freshly ground black pepper.

You can serve immediately, or let it cool then reheat it (remember the rhyme, pease pudding hot, pease pudding cold…).

Serve in large bowls with a pork strip and a couple of slices of the ham. Garnish with small bay leaves and have some fresh bread to soak up the soup .

]]>https://deptfordpudding.com/2012/01/06/this-is-a-london-particular-a-fog/feed/4onemorerollGreenwich_Riverfront,_1973_-_geograph.org.uk_-_477402linkboysA London Particular Pea Soup“Widow Medlar? She Lies Open to Much Rumour…”https://deptfordpudding.com/2011/11/28/widow-medlar-she-lies-open-to-much-rumour/
https://deptfordpudding.com/2011/11/28/widow-medlar-she-lies-open-to-much-rumour/#commentsMon, 28 Nov 2011 16:12:43 +0000http://deptfordpudding.com/?p=542I’ve just finished making some Medlar Jelly from fruit gathered in my local park. Medlars are forgotten and neglected now like quince and mulberries, but John Evelyn had Medlar trees in his Deptford orchard, as mentioned in his ‘Directions For the Gardiner at Sayes Court‘.

Medlars in September

When you find a Medlar tree, say in the Summer, you watch and wait. And wait… Around the middle of October you’ll still be waiting, and watching. Traditionally Medlars are picked at the end of November, after the first hard frost. David Pennel from the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale reckons it is better to pick the fruit at the end of October. “If you leave them on the tree to blet, they may become infected with a fungal rot. You won’t know they have been affected, but the fungus will taint anything you make with the Medlars. Just one infected fruit will taint everything.” They have about 8 trees at Brogdale, and sell all the fruit they produce. “In a good year we’ll sell 30 – 40 kilos per tree, in a very good year we might get 100 kilos from a single tree.”

Dan Neuteboom who grows and sells the trees from his nursery in Norfolk says that people only buy them for the blossom, not the fruit. He sells about 40 trees a year, of about 4 different varieties. Nigel Slater planted a Medlar in his garden, along with Quince, Mulberry, and Cobnut. He said he was “captivated by the romance and mystery… a fruit shot through with visions of walled Medieval gardens…How could anyone resist?”

The Benny Hill of Fruit

The medlar is the Benny Hill , the Monty Python, the Julian Clary and the Blackadder of fruit. Their medieval name is ‘open-arse’, but they have other names: ‘granny’s arse’, and in France cul de chien, the ‘dog’s bottom’! An 18th Century essay described them: “A fruit, vulgarly called an open arse; of which it is more truly than delicately said, that it is nevre ripe till it is as rotten as a turd, and then it is not worth a fart.”

Thomas Middleton 1580-1627

Widow Medler was a character in Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean play ‘A Trick To Catch the Old One.‘ Medlars were common sexual innuendo in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, Shakespeare used medlars for smutty laughs in four of his plays. In Romeo and Juliet he has Mercutio nudge and leer to Romeo “Now will he sit under a medlar tree, and wish his mistress were that kind of fruit as maids call medlars when they laugh alone. An open-arse and thou a poper’in pear!” He went to town with the triple entendre of a ‘poper’in pear.’ Poper’in pear was a reference to the shape of a man’s genitalia, and there’s the obvious ‘pop-her-in’, and ‘pop’ as in ‘pop goes the weasel’, a reference to orgasm. Shakespeare wasn’t the only writer to succumb to the temptation of a cheap laugh from the pit at The Globe. A few centuries earlier Chaucer wrote in The Reeve’s Tale, “if I fare as dooth an open-ers…till we be roten can we not be rype“.

Chaucer was refering to the apparent contradiction of rotten ripeness, so did DH Lawrence:

“I love you, rotten, delicious rottenness.

I love to suck you out from your skins

So brown and soft and coming suave,

Morbid, as the Italians say.

What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay: Stream within stream.

Something of the same flavour as Syracusan muscat wine

Or vulgar Marsala. Though even the word Marsala will smack of preciosity Soon in the pussy-foot West.

What is it? What is it, in the grape turning raisin, In the medlar, in the sorb-apple. Wineskins of brown morbidity,

Autumnal excrementa”

Medlars are eaten when they appear rotten, bletted is the word used for ripe medlars. When they first appear on the tree they are about the size of a large walnut and hard and inedible. If you cut one the flesh will be white like a very hard apple, and bitter.

Bletted Medlar

As they age the flesh softens, browns and becomes juicy. If you squeeze a bletted medlar the juice will ooze from the paper-thin skin. The best way to eat a bletted medlar is to break the skin and suck out the flesh, it tastes somewhere between a date and dry apple sauce, with a rumour of cinnamon. The taste is totally unique and delicious. To make more of them you’ll have to make them into fruit cheese, comfits, or a tart. Perhaps the easiest recipe is Medlar Jelly.

Shepherds’ Makhila, picture from wikicommons

They are related to the rose and the hawthorn, and in ancient times the wood was used to make spear points. Basque shepherds carry a stick called a makhila, made from the Medlar tree. The Malika is carved on the living tree, left for a year then cut down and heated. Then for a further ten years (!) the stick is alternately soaked in a secret solution and rubbed with pork fat. One end has a steel tip, and the other a stiletto blade concealed by a silver handle engraved with the owners name.

My pan of bletted medlars with lemon and apple, ready to cook.

This recipe is adapted from “The Complete Cook” by Nell Heaton, published in 1946, old recipe books are the places to find medlar recipes. It is a simple recipe though you really need a thermometer. Nigel Slater suggests adding lemons and apples, 1 lemon cut into six pieces and half an apple per 450g medlars , they help the jelly to set, or you could use quince for the same reason. Alternatively you can add some hard medlars, about one third of the weight of the bletted medlars. Medlar jelly goes well with game and mutton, and with cheese and walnuts. From my original 3.5 kg I ended up with just under 2 kg of usable bletted medlars.

Wipe the fruit with a clean dry cloth, then:
Either cut them into pieces, or as I did place them whole into a pan
with some water, 300 ml water to each 450 g fruit so the water just covers them. Bring to a boil then simmer, and wait till they become pulp. Avoid stirring, but you could press down onto the fruit with the back of a serving spoon, this may take up to an hour.
Then using a clean Jelly Bag or a piece of muslin, strain the liquid through the bag slowly. Don’t squeeze the bag! Patience! You want the jelly to be as clear as possible. Measure the juice then return to a clean pan, and for each 300 ml of liquid add 350g sugar. Boil the mixture hard and uncovered, use a thermometer to heat till the ‘jam’ setting is reached (104C), when the acid and pectin reacts with the sugar which will make jelly when the liquid cools. Should be around 4 – 5 minutes. Skim off any scum which I neglected to do with my first batch, don’t worry if you forget! Then pour into warm jars. Leave to set, then cover. The jelly will be an unexpected reddish colour and taste unlike anything else!

]]>https://deptfordpudding.com/2011/11/28/widow-medlar-she-lies-open-to-much-rumour/feed/7onemoreroll450px-Thomas_Middleton_MG_5474_DxOAMakhilaA_MG_5496MedlarsA Positive Terry Thomas…https://deptfordpudding.com/2011/11/13/a-positive-terry-thomas/
https://deptfordpudding.com/2011/11/13/a-positive-terry-thomas/#commentsSun, 13 Nov 2011 20:37:35 +0000http://deptfordpudding.com/?p=491If only Nikki could see me now, I thought. Back in June at a bit of a loose end, I enrolled on ‘A Taste of Food Writing’ course at Greenwich Community College. I’d always fancied trying to write about food so when I read about the course in ‘The Guide’ I thought “why not?”

There were about a dozen of us taking part, and I was probably the least experienced cook in the class. Nikki Spencer was our inspirational tutor and mentor and during the first class, to break the ice, she asked us to talk about ourselves, what we did, what cookery books we had, how many, and which dishes we liked cooking, which restaurants we’d visited, and so on. Rather shamefaced I said I didn’t cook, but I read cookery books for fun, and I prefered eating at home. I’ve been around cooks for years and I’ve eaten some extraordinary dishes, so I’ve always been confident I could cook, if I wanted to!

The course progressed over five weeks, at about week three Nikki talked to us about food blogging. For our ‘homework’ she asked us to go away and come back with something written for an imaginary blog. “About 300 words..?” said Nikki hopefully. Fired with enthusiasm I decided to do it for real, and so Deptford Pudding was born. I can’t say it was easy, I’m not the most computer-friendly person and I found the technicalities really hard work for the first couple of posts but then I began to get the hang of it. I can’t stick to 300 words though. “You’re an editor’s nightmare,” said my friend the editor.

Nikki is doing more courses at the Greenwich Community College next year, if you’re interested contact the college; or how about Nikki’s latest course ‘A Real Taste of Food Writing‘ which will take place at The Guildford in Greenwich where chef Guy Awford will cook a three course lunch, and reveal the behind-the-scenes life of a busy restaurant, as well as talking about his blog and answering questions.

Terry Thomas. Picture courtesy of Whisky Media

It was 6.30 on a Sunday evening four weeks ago when Clarissa slipped in some mud on the marshes and broke her arm. We dashed first to Sheppey hospital, where she was x-rayed and put in a half plaster, and then immediately onto the Medway Hospital in Chatham clutching a letter which the nurse assured us would move us to the head of the queue in A & E.

At 9.00pm we reached Chatham, the waiting area in the biggest A & E in Kent was hot, sweaty, and packed… standing room only. After a warm sunny day, most of the people waiting were dressed for a late summer barbeque, some were in sports strip limping and clutching knees or ankles. A couple of people were covered in blood, it was like a scene from ‘Blade Runner’ I thought, complete with two policemen in Robocop gear marshaling the queue at reception. Large family groups squatted on the floor eating bags of crisps from a kiosk selling drinks and sandwiches. I asked when the kiosk closed, “we’re open 24/7,” was the glazed reply. Not that it mattered I had very little money and in our dash we’d left the means to get cash behind. The lurcher was abandoned outside in the car park, which was of course pay and display 24/7.

Once, for the ‘News of the World,’ I photographed “24 Hours in Casualty”. The editor had decided Guys on a Saturday would be crammed with dramatic human interest stories ripe for the picking. I was given the night shift, 10pm Saturday till 10am Sunday, the period expected to yield the most bloody drama. But Casualty was eerily quiet and empty at midnight. The bored nurse on the desk said, “Why’d you come here? If you wanted some action you should have gone to Lewisham.” A couple of people drifted in with minor cuts and bruises, then some very hard looking men arrived and seeing me with my camera one of them said “Point that thing at us sunshine and you’ll be sorry.” So I didn’t. The next night we heard that someone had dropped dead in the car park outside, and a deranged gunman had dashed in firing a shot into the ceiling. The feature never appeared.

After waiting six hours at Medway we were seen at 3am by an orthopedic specialist who announced he would have to straighten Clarissa’s strangely bent arm, it was, said the tired doctor, “a dinner fork fracture”, a literal description of the shape of her arm, which had been forced into her wrist. Straighten it now he meant as he called for help, no anesthetic just two men pulling and tugging at her wrist and elbow.

typical 'dinner fork' fracture, courtesy wikimedia commons

Straightened to his satisfaction her arm was fully plastered, “What colour would you like?” said the smiling plasterer. “White” we said in unison, because we’re traditionalists. He shook his head sadly, “We’ve red, blue, and pink.” Pink turned out to be a shade I’d call ‘kinky pink’ so we went for that. Another wait in a bleak corridor for an x-ray, you can just see the pink plaster in the reflection, then home as dawn broke.

spot the pink arm

A few days later and we’re back in Chatham seeing the consultant. “It’s a positive Terry Thomas.” He almost beamed, a little too pleased with himself, “we’re probably going to have to operate.”

We asked to be transferred to Lewisham hospital, and so a week later we’re seeing a different consultant. This one looked a bit like Boris Johnson but without the bedside manner. By way of a hello he said ‘”I hope you realise how serious this is?” His students milled around the x-ray, clucking. “We’ll have to wait for it to mend, then break it again and insert a plate.”

Since Clarissa broke her arm she’s been completely out of action and in a lot of pain. Suddenly I’m a full-time carer, cooking breakfast and making endless cups of tea, plus a snack at lunch time, and then dinner. I’m enjoying being the cook and deciding what’s for dinner, I’m even enjoying the shopping.

home made hop bread

We’ve had some simple dishes, salads and soup, and some more imaginative cooking with fish and rabbit, but Clarissa has insisted on making the bread single-handed (hah-hah).

duck eggs are bigger in every way

She’s decided her favourite meal is one of the simplest: poached eggs with chips. Not potato chips, but parsnip and beetroot chips. We rarely eat potatoes since deciding that they don’t really taste of anything anymore. (I can still remember the last time I ate a potato that tasted remotely like potatoes should taste, and that was around 1990.)

Mike from Mersham Game

Every week since September I’ve bought eggs from Mike of Mersham Game at Brockley Market. Mike has 20,000(!) free-range hens, and his neighbour has 2,000 free-range ducks, I’ve been buying hen and duck eggs from his stall every Saturday. When he sees me and the wonder-lurcher wandering his way Mike picks up the egg boxes and starts filling them. Duck eggs are my favourite, they’re bigger than hens’ eggs with more flavour. Duck eggs contain less water than hens eggs and therefore are brilliant for baking. Want to bake light fluffy cakes? Use duck eggs… Mike sells hens eggs for £1 a half dozen, and duck eggs for £1.50 a half dozen. A bargain!

Luke with his brace of partridge

Walking around the market on Saturday we struck up a conversation with Luke, who is studying painting at Camberwell Art College. He caught our attention because he looked as if he’d just stepped out of a fashion shoot in his black velvet jacket, carrying a brace of still-feathered partridge dangling from his wrist. Like a willowy and more handsome version of Pete Doherty, Luke admitted he’d been vegetarian up till three weeks earlier, but he’d been attracted by the traditional offerings from Mersham Game. We wondered what he had planned for the partridge. “I’m going to put them in a pot, with some other things,” he said, vaguely but at the same time confidently. Which is exactly what I would have said…

Here’s my ‘recipe’ for poached egg with root vegetable chips (that’s French fries for anyone reading this in North America!). I used a duck egg because they are bigger, and taste more ‘eggy’. And I always use dripping to fry the chips, but you could use vegetable oil.

200g beef dripping, or if you use vegetable oil you’ll need sufficient oil for a depth of about 25 – 35 mm.

Clear malt vinegar, about a quarter cupful.

1 duck egg.

Black pepper, and sea salt.

Method :

Cut the vegetables into chip sized pieces, the bigger they are the longer they’ll need to cook. But, if you use beetroot cut them smaller, and try to keep them separate from the rest of the vegetables because they’ll stain them. (I fried the beetroot separately in a small saucepan using an extra 100g of dripping.)

Par-boil the chips for 10 minutes, or less, don’t let them get too soft. Test with a pointed knife.

While the chips are simmering, melt the dripping in a deep saucepan, mine is 200 mm in diameter and 125 mm tall. Heat till it fizzles if you dip the tip of a knife dipped in flour into the fat.The melted dripping should be about 25 mm deep, so this is shallow frying.

When the chips are par-boiled, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and drain in a colander. Scatter flour across a plate and toss each chip in the flour till they’re coated on every side. Then drop the chips into the hot dripping. Move the chips around in the fat, turning them with a palette knife making sure they are cooking evenly.

While they are cooking heat a saucepan of water till it boils. The water should be at least 75 mm deep. Prepare the eggs: (I cook them one at a time), have a cup or ramekin ready for each egg, and break the eggs into the cups. Heat your oven to plate-warming temperature, and put a plate in the oven to warm. If you’re only poaching one egg there’s no need to do this, but if you’re poaching 2 or 3 or 4, or more, then you’ll need to keep them warm while you cook all of the eggs. I’ve poached 6 eggs using this method, they stay warm without the yolks setting. If you use a large pan of water, I believe you can poach 4 – 6 eggs more or less at the same time, but I’ve never tried.

It is difficult to burn the chips but if you think they are ready before the eggs, just lift them out with a slotted spoon and put them in the oven to keep warm.

About 5 minutes before you expect to serve the finished dish, tip the vinegar into the boiling water. This stops the egg whites dispersing. (Don’t put any salt into the water.) Slightly reduce the heat so the water just goes off the boil. Take a hand whisk and vigorously stir the simmering water, I like to think stirring clockwise lets gravity give you a hand.

When you have a vortex in the water take an egg and quickly slide the egg into the centre of the swirling water. The egg will disappear from view in the water but don’t worry. Set a timer for 3 minutes for a soft egg yolk, more for hard. Hens eggs will take half a minute less. My experience is that it is very difficult to over-cook a poached egg.

Have your serving plate ready, check the chips, they should be crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Scoop them out of the fat with a slotted spoon and arrange them on the plate. After 3 minutes, carefully scoop the poached egg from the water again with a slotted spoon and arrange the egg on top of the chips. Scatter with sea salt and black pepper and serve.

This old t-shirt, bought at the Albany Empire around 1980, is one of my prize possessions. Every weekend we were either at the Albany, the Tramshed, The Duke, or the Royal Albert. Sometimes all of them, and there was always a party afterwards at somebody’s house or flat, with the musicians and actors turning-up and rocking-on. There’s a very good book about this period, “Rock Around Lewisham” by local author and musician Mel Wright, I recommend it. The old Albany Empire was in Creek Road near Albury Street, and famous for Rock Against Racism concerts, sadly in 1978 it burnt down and after a brief revival it was demolished to make way for a wider road. The Albany rose again in Douglas Way and we all joined (you joined in those days) because the acts and the atmosphere were really electric, everybody from the Flying Pickets to Bo Diddley, via Pookiesnackenburger and Billy Connelly. Squeeze were the dominant band, somehow more authentic than the equally ginormous Dire Straits. I seem to remember Dire Straits supporting Squeeze at the old Albany, but I might be wrong. Deptford was really buzzing: Bowie and the Spiders From Mars were rehearsing Ziggy Stardust in Underhill Studios (now Gee-Pharm chemists) at the bottom of Blackheath Hill, with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop in attendance; John Cale of the Velvet Underground was here producing Squeeze, Mark Perry’s ‘Sniffin’ Glue‘ was being edited from a flat on the Crossfields Estate, and local band Rubber Johnny, led by John Turner were filling the gap between the opening act and the headliners at the Royal Albert. Soon they became so popular they were headlining their own gigs.

In 1980 Squeeze released ‘Argybargy’, the last album with Jools Holland on keyboards. I was at the time what you’d call a rock photographer and photographed Squeeze several times.

Squeeze photographed in 1980 by David Porter.

This picture was taken in 1980 in an old pea warehouse under the Floral Hall in Covent Garden which had been converted into a cavernous underground studio, I’ve still got the parachute.

In 1982 John Turner adapted Squeeze’s ‘East Side Story’ into a stage production for the Albany and called it ‘Labelled With Love.’ We were there when it opened, along with Tim Rice who was probably picking up a few tips on musical theatre. The play was set in a smoky Deptford boozer threatened with conversion into a disco cocktail bar, the fictional ‘Nail in the Heart’. “It’s happening everywhere,” sighed Eric the pub landlord, “Bermondsey has fallen, Peckhams on the way, and Lewisham is sure to follow...” We all murmured agreement, and after the show trooped round to The Duke on Creek Road, transformed for the show’s run into The Nail, complete with pub sign of a heart pierced by a nail, the landlord of The Duke was called Erich.

The opening track of ‘East Side Story’ is ‘In Quintessence’, one of those tunes you can’t get out of your head. A song about a 15 year old boy’s fantasy about a girl that he never sees, while he smokes himself into oblivion in his messy bedroom listening to his transistor radio. The ‘in quintessence’ hook is the bit I can never get out of my head. I didn’t know what quintessence meant at the time, I assumed it was a made up word something to do with quinces. Now I’ve found out one possible meaning is the fifth element! The Greeks and Roman believed the quince was the golden apple, Aphrodite’s fruit of love.

I’ve been given some quinces, from a tree on an allotment in Catford, and some from my friend in Lee with the greengage tree. Turkish shops are selling quinces now, at about £2 per kilo; their quinces are bigger than my home-grown variety but they all have the most subtle but unique perfume. You could just buy a bowlful and leave them to scent the room.

Plan of Sayes Court Garden in the 1650s. The British Library.

The quince is one of England’s forgotten fruit. We can be certain John Evelyn would have had quince trees among his 300 fruit trees in the orchard at Sayes Court, along with the similarly forgotten medlars, mulberries and vines, lemons, apricots and pomegranates. Thanks to London’s Lost Garden I know that he listed a ‘Portugal Quince’ in his 1687 Directions for the Gardiner. Quince trees in England were first recorded at the Tower of London in 1275, possibly they were here before 1275 but Evelyn’s Portugal Quince was introduced in 1611 by John Tradescant who was working as head gardener for Robert Cecil at Hatfield House.

This recipe for baked quinces is adapted from the recipe in Jane Grigson’s ‘Fruit Book’, but they don’t have to be reserved for sweet puddings. Mrs Grigson gives recipes for quinces with beef, and with pheasant for instance, and I know of a Persian recipe for quinces stuffed with minced lamb. Mrs Grigson wrote that baked quinces were Isaac Newton’s favourite pudding, and of course Newton and John Evelyn were friends. It’d be nice to imagine John bidding farewell to Isaac, and pressing a bag of quince onto his friend, “I’ve so many…take some home…”

1 quince per person (assuming they are of a suitable size, otherwise 1 or 2 per person)

Juice of one or two lemons

150g caster sugar

110g unsalted butter

3 tbs double cream (or more if necessary)

2 glasses of sweet white wine

1 cinnamon stick, gently pulled into a few shards

Method:

Either peel entirely, or as I did peel strips from each quince. Hollow out the centre of each fruit, without piercing all the way through. I used an apple-corer but this is more difficult than it might appear, quinces are very hard! Squeeze lemon juice over the peeled exterior and the hollowed-out cores. Butter a small-ish roasting tin and stand the quinces in the dish. If necessary cut them a flatter bottom so they stand up.

Then mix together the sugar, butter, and cream, till the mixture is smooth and creamy. Fill the hollowed cores with this mixture, finishing with a tablespoon of sugar sprinkled over the top of each fruit. Scatter some shards of cinnamon stick around the dish.

Put in your oven preheated to 200C and bake for about 25 minutes, then pour in the wine. Carry on baking till the quince is tender. I tested for this with a slim skewer pushed through the side of a quince, avoiding the hard centre. If you’ve any of the creamy mixture left now is the time to top up the middles of your quinces. They took about 90 minutes altogether, you could reduce the heat to 180C and cook them for longer depending how soft you like your puddings I served them after transferring them to a heated dish and pouring some of the liquid around the quince, and have some cream ready to pour over them at the last minute.